


Something's missing

by pebbles1971



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Coming Out, Hurt Rodney McKay, I'm Bad At Tagging, Internalized Homophobia, John Sheppard has marshmallow insides, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:53:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23367238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pebbles1971/pseuds/pebbles1971
Summary: It wasn’t their first time but it felt uncannily new. So hot and perfect and all consuming. This man had become everything to John and he didn’t even know how, except that it had been going on a long, long time before he ever acknowledged it, and now he had it all.
Relationships: John Sheppard/Original Male Character(s), Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Rodney McKay/Other(s), Ronon Dex/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CN: mention of suicide and John’s suicidal tendencies, severe medical emergency/need of transplant, internalised homophobia, depression, very nasty bugs and critters
> 
> This fic starts and ends with a little light porn but has an actual story sandwiched in the middle. Yet another fic in my ongoing quest to see how many ridiculous scenarios I can get the boys into due to their inability to communicate.
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta reader (you know who you are)
> 
> I'll post it all within the month - please leave comments and let me know how you're all doing/all feedback welcome!

It wasn’t their first time but it felt uncannily new. So hot and perfect and all consuming. This man had become everything to John and he didn’t even know how, except that it had been going on a long, long time before he ever acknowledged it, and now he had it all.

John was obsessed with Rodney skin. Its translucent paleness, its softness the perfect contrast to how broad and solid Rodney was. He grabbed handfuls of it self-indulgently, while his mouth moved over Rodney, licking and nipping and mouthing and kissing, eliciting delicious little sighs from his partner. Rodney’s stout fingers tangled in John’s hair as John moved down the other man’s body, letting the perfect dusting of chest hair tickle his face.

He was so damned happy it was almost breaking him apart.

He wanted his mouth on Rodney cock like he wanted oxygen. He could remember doing this so many times before. They’d been together, what, a year? Together, together. As Rodney had pointed out that day, they were already a couple long before that, just without the fun, bumping body parts bit.

But there was a thrill running through him today that felt new. Something had changed that John could not put his finger on. It almost felt like he’d never done this before, never gone down on a man, just like that very first night with Rodney when he had next to no experience but couldn’t wait to get his mouth wrapped around Rodney’s dick. And boy, what he lacked in experience he’d made up for in enthusiasm. Rodney may have been much more experienced with men but he seemed to be more than happy with whatever John did.

The two of them simply fit together, perfectly.

John slid further down Rodney’s body, teasing at the man’s hips with his mouth and hands before finally closing his lips around the head of Rodney’s leaking cock. This elicited a gratifying sigh from the man underneath him.

‘Oh God, John!’ Rodney moaned, ‘your mouth is perfect. You’re perfect.’

This wasn’t just sex. John had known that right from the start, in fact that was what had made him finally entertain something that he’d been avoiding for six long years. McKay had been coming on to him in his usual clumsy fashion almost from the moment they met. John was used to being treated like a piece of meat by men and women (but especially by men), and honestly that had never been too appealing to him. Hence the total lack of experience.

It was easier to be casual with women. His feelings just didn’t run as deep. Whatever it was that guys wanted from him was a million miles from what he had wanted from guys when he was young and stupid before the Air Force beat the gay out of him. With women he could paddle in the shallows and it was all good.

So McKay treating him like a potential fuck was unremarkable and not that tempting. It took the stupid bastard six whole years to admit that he was covering up his own deeper feelings.

‘I love you. God, John.’ Rodney moaned as John sucked him in deeper. It wasn’t the first time Rodney had said that, and John would be more than happy to say it back if his mouth were not occupied. In the end, it had been oddly easy after six years of not talking to suddenly let it all pour out.

‘Everyone thinks we’re a couple, for God’s sake,’ Rodney had said out of the blue one day, ‘and that’s because we are. You must know how I feel about you by now and I think . . . well, your actions speak volumes. We should be together. That’s all.’

John had looked at him and seen for the first time that this really wasn’t the geek objectifying his (apparently) hot friend, this was something else entirely. This was him and Rodney, something close and real that was unique to the two of them. Best friends and more.

Much more, as it turned out.

‘I mean, if you’re worried about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell . . .’ Rodney had added.

‘Really not,’ John had said, ‘if Jack O’Neill and Daniel Jackson have been flouting it for over a decade then I don’t see why I should care about it.’

‘Point.’ Rodney came back. ‘So . . .’

John had stepped up really close to Rodney. ‘So . . .’ And then he’d just grabbed for the front of Rodney’s shirt and kissed him with all the pent-up desperation that six years of denial will supply.

Twenty minutes later he’d been blowing Rodney and loving it just like he was right now. He really, really loved Rodney’s cock. It was, like Rodney, broad and responsive and soft and sensitive, and, though he would never say this out loud, extremely pretty.

John wasn’t a porn star. He wasn’t going to deep throat or do anything particularly fancy, but he didn’t need to. Rodney went crazy for John’s mouth on him and when John’s tongue flicked that bundle of nerves just below the head he cried out every damn time.

Today, he didn’t want to get Rodney all the way off. His mouth slipped off the other man’s cock with a soft pop.

‘Want you inside me.’ He said breathlessly.

‘John, yes anything.’ Rodney sounded as breathless as John felt, and that same quality of newness that he’d been feeling since they woke up today was there in Rodney’s voice too. There was a sense of wonder in the way Rodney was looking down at him, a sense of disbelief, as if this thing between them was freshly minted and not a whole year old.

A perfect year. A happy year.

It was only when he found this thing with Rodney that John realised how miserable he had been for so long. He thought he’d been alive but he’d only been alive in the air. For this man in his bed he would give up flying, Atlantis. Anything. Because Rodney had given him a _life_. Taught him things he didn’t know about himself. Healed wounds he would have denied ever having.

Rodney turned him over, kissed down his back, bit gently into the flesh of his buttock and then began to tease at his hole with his tongue.

Being rimmed by Rodney was one of his favourite things. His body was reacting like he’d never had this happen to him before. There was something so intense about today, something different, special. If there had been oceans of feeling in their previous encounters, this was a fucking tsunami.

‘Rodney, God, God, I love you so much . . .’

He’d never found it so easy to say how he felt, but lately it was as if the boundary between his thoughts and his words had fallen . . . he could tell this man anything, everything. And know that the reverse was happening just as easily. It was some kind of miracle that the universe’s two worst communicators had suddenly learned to express themselves with each other. Sometimes he felt like he was simply seeing inside of Rodney’s mind. It was completely effortless. It was maybe a little disconcerting.

Rodney’s fingers were opening him up now and he was moaning with pleasure as Rodney teased at his prostate.

John remembered when exactly things had changed. They’d got back from that freaky mist planet, the one that reminded them of M5S-224, one of their early offworld trips. John didn’t remember all planet designations but that had been the one that made them hallucinate being back on Earth. Thankfully, this time Rodney’s readings did not pick up any similar issues and they’d made it home safe and sound, though they hadn’t wanted to linger.

And it was just that evening that things had changed so dramatically between the two of them. This last year had been like a dream in the midst of a nightmare of a life. John shuddered for a second, a flash of worry teasing at the edge of his consciousness, but then all he knew was Rodney sinking into him and it was perfect, all his empty places filled at last.

It wasn’t just the sex with Rodney. John felt loved right down to his very bones. Something he’d never experienced in the entirety of his life. Maybe some people had tried to love him, but they’d never quite managed it, or maybe he’d never quite let them. Rodney had slipped inside him in every possible way, it almost hadn’t been a choice. It was as if one day they had just seen inside each other’s hearts and _knew._ They didn’t fall in love; they had already fallen without even knowing.

Rodney groaned as he bottomed out inside of John and John sighed, twisting himself round to kiss Rodney, putting everything he felt into the movement of his lips and tongue. Rodney pulled him up and into his lap, his rhythm a slow slide like a heartbeat. They were a pretzel of limbs moving against each other with perfect friction.

John wanted to do this forever. When he thought about the last year it pretty much had been one long fuck, they had found so much time to be together in the year that had been . . . surprisingly uneventful wraith wise.

John felt that catch again. A sense of unreality closing in on him and making him uneasy. When he thought about things that had happened in the last year it felt a little bit like . . . like the memories were writing themselves as he focused in on them. It was reminiscent of a film set, where there was empty space beyond the places the camera needed to go.

Rodney was thrusting up into him, hitting his prostate every time and reaching down to stroke John’s balls and grasp his cock and John told himself _stupid, stupid,_ because this was real and perfect and more right than anything John had ever known.

‘Fuck, Rodney! Yes! Just like that. Oh, God . . .’ Rodney’s thrusting became frenzied and he was jacking John’s cock to the same rhythm. For a moment John wondered if he was just going to soar higher and higher until he took off into space but then Rodney was crying out and his rhythm became ragged as he came inside of John. John responded with a brain-melting orgasm of his own.

Rodney held him close through after-shock after after-shock and then they tipped together down on the bed in a tangle of limbs. John could feel come dripping down his ass as Rodney slipped out and his own ejaculation cooling on his stomach and there was just no way this wasn’t real.

Surely.

They dozed after that and when John started to come to he found himself gazing at Rodney’s drowsing form, carding his hands gently through Rodney’s soft, thinning hair. Rodney opened his eyes gently and met John’s gaze with such an open look that it took John’s breath away.

‘How did I get so lucky?’ John asked. But he already knew the answer. He dropped his mask. Didn’t even know he managed it, it just happened. All this time he’d been protecting his heart and it turned out he’d been protecting it from this. From sheer fucking bliss.

If he lost this, it would end him. That was the trouble, right there. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him losing his mother as a kid was to blame for the way he had locked up his heart. She had loved him, and nobody else had really got him. When he lost her it had been too much to bear. It wasn’t hard to figure out that it had been indelible, impossible to change the shape that one event had moulded him into.

It had all been there on the inside the whole time but he never let it show. The hardass airman who was marshmallow where people couldn’t see. It was so fucking weird that one day Rodney McKay was seeing inside his head, had moved past all his defences without any effort at all. And John found that he’d been crying out for that to happen the whole fucking time, but the armour was so splendidly erected nobody had stood a chance.

He’d say that it took a genius but honestly, it was more like magic than science, what Rodney did. And equally weird was the way John had gone from not really getting a lot about Rodney, even though the man was his best friend, even though he would have died for him, even though he already loved him . . . to almost being able to see inside the man’s head as clearly as Rodney seemed to see inside of him.

It was just too perfect.

The most heartbreaking conclusion seared itself through John’s brain: If all this was happening inside his own head, if none of this was real, it would explain why it was so damned easy.

‘Rodney . . . do you ever wonder if this is all real?’

The mist creatures back on that other planet had given them separate hallucinations. He had shared with Teyla but the others had been in their own worlds. So, if this was a hallucination, it might really be Rodney in his arms or it might simply be mist.

‘John, you’re just doing your worry thing, your fear of commitment thing. We’re okay, everything is okay.’ Rodney kissed down his neck and the feel of the man’s breath and stubble against his skin was impossible to deny.

‘I want you completely naked,’ Rodney said a little while later. ‘Can you do that for me?’

John blushed, and shrugged, finally pulling off his dogtags, his watch, his black wristband – things he almost never removed. Rodney traced the jagged scar across his wrist that the wristband covered, kissed the sensitive skin around the scar.

‘Tell me about this?’ He asked, looking worried for his lover, even though the scar was old, so old. ‘Did you . . .?’

John knew what it looked like – it was why he wore the band. People would guess wrong, but also, in a way, right.

‘No, it wasn’t that.’ Then he thought about it for a second and couldn’t help but be open to Rodney. ‘But I guess I was being reckless for a reason, so in a way it was . . .’ he fell silent, wondering how to tell a story nobody had ever heard. ‘It was after my mom died. Some time after, because things just kept getting worse for a while. I was maybe 12, 13? Starting to realise I was gay, too, and that wasn’t so much fun in the late seventies. People around me were cottoning on . . . I didn’t really know how to act like a man back then, though I got real good at it later.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rodney, ‘although I’d challenge the notion that having a soft centre isn’t manly, I can see how back then it didn’t go down so well. So . . .’

‘So anyway,’ John continued, suddenly _wanting_ to tell this. ‘I’d take my skateboard to this old abandoned military site, miles from anywhere. I’d do stupid, dangerous things. I liked it if I came home all beat up. It kinda made sense of the other kind of pain I was in.’

‘Oh John . . . and so a career soldier was born, huh?’ Rodney said, not without compassion.

‘Yeah, I guess . . . yeah. I think . . . it helped me find the bits of myself that were tough.’

God, John never talked like this. Where was it all coming from? It was like his head was being mined for information without his conscious will involved.

‘Nobody noticed I was gone for whole days at a time, or that I was coming back hurt. Nobody knew where I was going. Until one day I messed myself up worse than usual. Cut open my wrist on some old machinery, knocked myself out, too. Woke up in a pool of blood, weak and dizzy. Knew straightaway that if I just lay there, sooner or later I would die. And I felt kinda peaceful about it. I mean, I think this is what I intended all along, to one day hurt myself so bad there was no going back. I don’t think I was functioning in the world without anyone to tether me to it. So I lay down, thought about my mom and being with her, and let myself fall asleep.’

‘Fuck, John.’ Rodney pulled him close, his fingers tracing the scars. ‘How on earth did you survive? Did they come and find you?’ He could hear the sadness and the hope in Rodney’s voice and suddenly realised what a heartbreaking story this was. Tears welled up in John’s eyes, because yeah, this was his story, and it _was_ heartbreaking.

‘No. Nobody came.’ He shivered, and Rodney pulled him close. ‘But it turns out bleeding to death isn’t as peaceful as it sounds. Blood pumping out of your wrist is pretty much too painful to sleep through, and blood leaving your head kinda gives you a bad headache. Anyway, the pain focused my mind in a different way and suddenly I was all full of adrenaline and survival instinct and I thought maybe I was angry enough to spite the fuckers who didn’t give a damn if I was alive, who maybe even didn’t want guys like me to exist. And that included my asshole father. So I pulled my shirt off, wrapped it tight around my bloody wrist and skated three miles to the nearest phone where I called 911. I was unconscious when they came and got me, had lost a _lot_ of blood. They told me it was a miracle I survived, and they couldn’t figure how I’d got to that phone booth, but it taught me once and for all how tough I could be.’

‘Great,’ said Rodney, ‘did it also set the pattern for your uncanny ability to flirt with death and get away with it?’

John could see the pain in Rodney’s eyes from too many times believing this time John wasn’t coming back. John wasn’t about to admit he _never_ thought he was coming back and didn’t really care that much. ‘Maybe . . .’ he said simply.

‘But now your dad knew you were in trouble, surely . . .’

‘All my dad ever knew was I had an accident. He took my skateboard off me and never said another word about it. I traded for another one and within a week I was back there doing the same stupid stunts. In fact, that’s where I first got the taste for flying.’ _That_ was a memory that would always make John’s heart feel giddy, the first time he’d felt himself suspended in the air, weightless from the opposing forces of momentum and gravity.

‘I hate your dad.’ Rodney said, bringing him back to earth. ‘Quite a bit, actually.’

‘Yeah, I don’t have the energy to hate him anymore, but I appreciate you carrying on the baton for me,’ John grinned at his lover, trying to swipe away the thought that he never would talk out loud about stuff like this, not in the real world.

Rodney kissed him again, long and slow. It started off loving, and a little bit sad, but turned increasingly filthy over the ensuing minutes. His lips moved to John’s neck, and along his collarbone, while clever fingers tweaked his nipples. John was surprised to find his sated body responding again to his lover.

For what seemed like hours he let Rodney play with his body, but the doubts, once started, kept creeping back. Part of him knew that his resistance to facing the truth was as much to do with how good this was as to whether or not it was real.

It was the perfect mindfuck. If this wasn’t really Rodney, and honestly they were just too perfectly in sync for him to really believe it was, then he was being fucked by an alien entity, or at least mindfucked.

But on the other hand, if this wasn’t Rodney then there was _nothing at all_ for him out there in the real world but the cold misery he’d been used to before . . . this. If it was just a fantasy, it was still perfect, it still felt real.

How fucked up was it that he’s only ever felt truly alive in an alien mist-induced hallucination with a doppelganger of his best friend?

‘Hey, John, what’s wrong?’ Rodney put a hand to John’s cheek, wiping tears away.

‘I can’t have this,’ John shook a little, suppressing a sob.


	2. Chapter 2

‘I can’t have this,’ John shook a little, suppressing a sob.

‘What are you talking about?’ hallucination-Rodney was exactly as abruptly outraged as real Rodney might sound, but John had spent seven . . . no, six years alongside this guy, in work and play, and the mist aliens had plenty of data to mine. Hell, they had Rodney in his own hallucination, so they could get it all straight from the horse’s mouth.

John just shook his head, not trusting his voice.

‘Look, John, they’re doing away with DADT and DOMA, if we’re careful for just a little bit longer, we can fucking have it all. Be the grumpy old married couple nobody wants to talk to.’

John’s heart squeezed at the thought of that. God, he wanted that, but he hadn’t known it until he got here, into this hallucination. How could he even tell his feelings were real if nothing else was?

Except the mist aliens hadn’t got this out of nowhere. He’d been in love with Rodney the whole time, just refused to admit it to himself, let alone anyone else.

And now he would never have to.

He couldn’t let this continue. He got out of the bed, slipped into his uniform, leaned down to give Rodney a long kiss goodbye. His heart was breaking, but if he didn’t do this now, he might not have the strength to leave.

Although dying in this happy fantasy didn’t seem such a bad way to go, all things considered.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I gotta take care of something.’ He kissed Rodney again, reluctant to leave. They’d got him good – he wondered just how long he’d been here. He realised the year of memories were even less substantial than this current hallucination but still, his body had been without food and water for who knew how long, and that meant Rodney had also been without food and water.

***

John squeezed Rodney’s hand one last time, turned his back and left. He felt like he’d been hollowed out as he paced down the corridor towards a balcony, where he gripped the rail until his knuckles went white and shouted out into the empty air.

‘Okay, we need to talk. I know what you are, we encountered your kind before. Talk to me.’

 _Send anybody but him,_ John pleaded in his head.

The man that appeared next to him was dressed as a Pegasus native; he had long dark hair, pale skin, pre-industrial clothes.

‘Look, whatever you’re worried about, if you look in my memories you’ll see . . . we mean you no harm.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ the alien said. ‘We are not like our brethren that you encountered before. We were only curious . . . wanting to play, wanting to understand what desires drive you.’ The man twitched his lips into a smile.

Cold fury flooded through John, and he grabbed the smirking alien and slammed him against the rail, bending his back out into empty air. ‘I’m not your fucking plaything!’ But the alien simply dissolved, and with him the entire hallucination, with a whisper of something flickering through John’s brain that felt like an apology.

He came to lying on cool ground, surrounded by mist, feeling weak and desperately thirsty. Rodney was lying beside him, coming to as well.

‘Hey, buddy,’ John said, trying not to let his voice crack. He fished in his pack for a canteen and a power bar, handing both to McKay. The man looked disorientated and was holding his head. John helped him drink, then opened the bar and fed it to him slowly. Remembering his hypoglycaemia, John watched him carefully for signs he was going to be sick. They needed to get him back to Atlantis and the infirmary.

‘Are you with me, Rodney?’ he was peripherally aware of Teyla and Ronon also coming to. Only when he was sure Rodney was okay would he pay any attention to the others or take a drink himself.

‘Ronon? John? Rodney?’ Teyla sounded dazed for a moment, disorientated. ‘It was as if my deepest wishes had come true,’ she said, looking as bereft as John felt. ‘How was it with you?’

‘Wraith were gone. Sateda was renewed.’ Ronon’s voice dripped with bitterness.

Utter fuckers. Suddenly John’s non-existent love-life seemed trivial.

‘McKay. Speak to me.’ John said, still worried about the way Rodney was swaying slightly and holding his head.

‘I’m ok . . . ow . . . that was . . . weird.’

‘What did you hallucinate?’ John held his breath and hoped.

‘Oh, Nobel prizes, Sam Carter’s adulation, and other, even more improbably things.’ Rodney said, his voice surprisingly light.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

‘What about you, Sheppard?’

‘Peace and flying and surfing a perfect beach,’ John said easily.

‘Sounds about right,’ Rodney sighed. ‘Well, come on, let’s get out of here,’ his tone was more than usually abrasive and John shrank a little more inside himself, trying not to let the others see his breaking heart.

***

‘What the fuck was that?’ Rodney shouted at John after dragging him back through the gate. John resembled a pincushion, with the native’s thin arrows embedded in his arm, shoulder and thigh, but miraculously nothing had done real damage, thanks to Rodney disobeying him and hanging back when John told him to go through the gate.

‘That’s the second time in a month you’ve lingered in harm’s way for no good reason, Sheppard!’ Rodney was getting a little shrill, and all John could think was about how his feet had just stopped working – as soon as he’d thought Rodney was safe at the gate he’d just . . . stopped caring completely. Only he’d started caring again quick enough when, instead of walking through the event horizon, Rodney had turned around to see John just standing there, not even covering himself, letting the (justifiably pissed off on this occasion) indigenous people take shots at him.

Okay, so he made a point of not killing people who were armed with arrows and darts to his armour piercing bullets, especially when they had the moral high ground, but he hadn’t even raised his gun.

‘I . . .’ John had no clue what to say. _I hallucinated being happy and now my life seems empty and pointless and I don’t know how to keep going._ He could never tell Rodney the truth, and he wasn’t prepared to tell anyone else he was so fucking depressed he thought about eating his gun most days, ‘. . . don’t wanna talk about it.’

Rodney looked at him for a long minute, as if trying to work through complex math in his head. ‘Okay,’ he said, his voice suddenly artificially calm. ‘You don’t want to talk to me, fine. But whatever this is, I am not just going to stand by and watch. You talk to Carson, you talk to the shrinks, you do whatever you have to do, but you sort this out. I will not go through this again. Are we clear?’ But Rodney was already stalking away before John had a chance to respond, leaving him dripping blood on the gate room floor and waiting for the medics.

Ronon came up to him as he sank to the steps, feeling lightheaded but not seriously injured. His friend checked John over with a handsy approach that grounded him. He didn’t get touched nearly enough and that was just one more thing that accentuated the bleakness of his life. Satisfied that John’s wounds would keep til the medics arrived, Ronon sank down next to him, bumping his shoulder against John’s.

‘You’re not the only one, Sheppard.’

 _Fuck._ His head was so full of Rodney and his own stupid, trivial pain he’d lost sight of his friend. Ronon had been withdrawn too since they got back from the mist planet.

‘I’m sorry, buddy. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Beer later?’ There was a flicker of something in Ronon’s eyes that told John he was asking for what was possible, not what was needed, but John had no idea how to meet that need in the man’s eyes.

‘Sure,’ he said, ineffectually.

It wasn’t like he and Ronon were going to suddenly start talking about their feelings. Only a part of him desperately wanted to.

***

‘Sheppard I need to talk to you,’ Ronon said to him a fortnight later, a note of “break it to John gently” in his gruff voice.

‘Yeah, buddy, what can I do for you?’ He could tell that whatever this was he wasn’t going to like it.

‘Been thinking about what I hallucinated,’ the man said bluntly. ‘Been thinking it told me what I was missing.’ John’s heart lurched at these words.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m going home, John. It’s been long enough, and a whole bunch of us are going back to Sateda.’

‘God, Ronon, I don’t know what to say. That’s fucking brave. We’re gonna miss you here.’ That was hard to say through the lump rising in his throat.

‘Won’t get a chance to. I’m not giving up the job, and we’ll need Atlantis at our backs. Not like I can’t commute through the gate.’

John felt two things simultaneously. There was a sense of healing emanating from his friend that made him almost grateful, and at the same time a sense of abandonment that nearly knocked him off his feet.

‘I’m happy for you buddy, genuinely,’ John said at last, his voice a little thick.

‘You should spend some time there,’ Ronon said bluntly. ‘You need a change, Sheppard. Since we got back from that planet, something’s been off. I know what those aliens did was screwed up, but are you sure there isn’t a message in there for you, like there was for me?’

‘There was nothing for me there but lies and tricks,’ John snapped back. ‘Listen, I gotta go, but I’m happy for you. Truly.’

John almost scurried away, needing to be anywhere there were no other people. He felt like the walls were closing in on him, like he couldn’t hold himself up.

Ronon was right. Rodney was right. He needed to sort this out, but he didn’t know how.

***

‘What about you, Teyla?’ John asked his friend one day, bouncing Torren on his knee and relishing the human contact. ‘Could you find anything helpful in your experience with the mist?’

Teyla had never told him what she hallucinated. Now, she looked away, as if afraid to let him see too much.

‘I cannot say that I see it as Ronon does, as a blessing, because I felt hurt and manipulated and toyed with.’ Teyla was clearly still very angry. ‘But I think that I learned something, yes. I think I am making changes in my life to make my desires more possible.’

 _And what if your desires are impossible?_ John thought bitterly.

She turned to John, giving him one of her appraising looks. ‘What about you, John? I can see how hurt you have been by this experience, though I do not pretend to know why. But is there a lesson there, even amid the hurt?’

‘I’m gay,’ John said, without even knowing that he was going to say it. Without really knowing that it was even in his head to say.

All his life he had avoided labelling himself, thinking it a kind of freedom. But somewhere along the line it had become a disowning of something that seemed impossible. At first, because he could not make his soft and sweet desires match the kinds of people and places he had access to in his teens. And then because the military made it impossible, although for a long time that had been a kind of blessing. Now, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell had finally been repealed and the world was different. Gay men could fall in love, get married. It wasn’t just about furtive sex and seedy clubs. Maybe it had never been about that, maybe John had just never let himself explore far enough to find what he desired. Maybe he had let his internalised homophobia taint the way he looked at the gay scene and never let himself see more.

‘John, I am so glad you told me.’ Teyla said this as if she already knew but didn’t want to say that outright. She put her forehead to his. ‘I hope now that silly law has changed that life will start to get easier for you.’

But John couldn’t imagine moving on from the experience of spending a year in love with his best friend. How could he reshape his feelings into something he could manage? Even if the mist creatures had finally pushed him out of the closet, they had unwittingly left Rodney McKay’s marks indelibly on his skin.


	3. Chapter 3

‘There is somebody I would like you to meet,’ Teyla said one day, a few weeks later. ‘I think you will . . . hit it off.’

‘Oh my God, Teyla, are you trying to set me up on a blind date?’ John was relieved, to be honest, because it meant Teyla had given up trying to probe him about his feelings for Rodney.

‘I am. Come to dinner at ours for 7 o’clock in two days.’ John looked a little concerned at the word “dinner” until Teyla added ‘Kanaan will cook.’

Kofi Bayissa, it turned out, was exactly John’s type. He was dazzlingly bright; cultured and emotionally intelligent as well as off the scale smart in his discipline. He had been recruited into Area 51 age 17, straight out of university, and now, age 32, with PhDs in xenobiology and nanite engineering, he was a rising star. He had just landed in Atlantis in the last three months and was still awestruck by the whole experience.

John had seen him around, and noticed him – he couldn’t not.

Kofi was cute in an oblivious, nerdy way. He was slightly built, a little shorter than John, pretty eyes and great cheekbones and a really wild, scruffy Afro that screamed “nerd who hasn’t got time for unimportant things like taming my hair”. He turned up to the meal in a faded Buffy T-shirt and his uniform pants. John was completely disarmed by him from the start.

Kofi spent the time before dinner playing with Torren and barely even looking at John. In the end, John figured the guy was actually shy not rude (though god knows, rude worked for him too) and he went and helped the two of them with their ambitious building project, a city of tall towers with vehicle tracks weaving through them.

‘You see, what this city really needs is a sky-way,’ John said confidently, and began to build another track soaring through the city spires.

‘Ah, I was warned you were a fly-boy through and through by my friend Dr McKay. I see he wasn’t kidding.’ Kofi finally looked at John and his grin did something funny to John’s insides. He didn’t even feel weird about the fact that Rodney knew about this set-up. He felt oddly peaceful about it, in fact.

‘Yeah?’ He offered a grin of his own, the genuine one he saved for select people. ‘Did he warn you about anything else?’

‘Uh-huh, he warned me that if I hurt you, I quote, “you will find yourself in a parallel universe and never be heard from again”.’ Kofi did a passable Rodney impression, and John snorted embarrassingly loudly.

‘Kanaan and Teyla said something more subtle,’ Kofi continued, ‘but I think it amounted to the same thing.’

John blushed, not knowing quite what to say.

‘It’s an attractive quality, seeing a man through the eyes of friends that care that much.’ Kofi gave John a warm look, and yet again John found his insides responding in a most curious way.

By the second course, John and Kofi were arguing animatedly about whether Baker or Tennant was the definitive Doctor (despite the age gap, they were in the opposite camps than one might expect) and Teyla and Kanaan were looking equal parts very bored and very pleased.

When he walked with John to the transporter after the meal, Kofi said to him;

‘You know, you should go out with me just because my hair makes yours look respectable,’ his face was composed, but his brown eyes were twinkling with mischief.

John responded by kissing him softly on the lips. Kofi’s lips were full and very responsive – they tasted so damn good John went back for seconds.

‘Okay,’ he said with a smile.

***

John stepped through the gate into bright, Satedan sunshine, Kofi and Rodney at his side. Ronon was there to meet them, looking almost-happy, and relaxed in dark grey clothes. John recognised by now the precision and complexity of Satedan manufacturing; the new colonists had salvaged a lot of goods from ruined factories and shops.

The four men exchanged hugs, and John was aware of a growing contentment radiating through him. He was with three people he loved. Life was good for the first time in as long as he could remember. He and Kofi had taken it ridiculously slow but now a few months had passed they were definitely a couple and John was getting regular, really great sex, watching an even more ridiculous amount of sci-fi thanks to the two big nerds in his life, learning about the Ethiopian culture Kofi had been raised with as an émigré in the US, and teaching him, by way of his own total lack of culture, surfing and golf and his secret strategies for beating Rodney at chess.

The three of them hung out a fair amount and it was weird how not-weird that was.

He was happy, he realised, and it surprised him. This wasn’t what he expected, not exactly what he wanted, but it was good, and he was beginning to glue the bits of himself back together again.

‘Come see the restored Heritage Centre,’ Ronon said, leading them through streets now cleared of rubble, past sapling trees and fresh paint. They arrived at the grandest intact building in the capital (Sateda was, confusingly, the name of both the city and the world). It was an ugly/beautiful building, complex and imposing, it had a sort of brutalist vibe John appreciated.

‘It reminds me a little of the Geisel Library,’ Kofi remarked.

‘Huh, I was thinking of brutalism myself, great minds and all that,’ John said, squeezing his hand.

‘Oh, yuk,’ Rodney rolled his eyes, ‘if you two could stop being the adorable couple for just a second, I might keep my breakfast down.’ But his crooked mouth was twitching into almost-a-smile and John sensed his friend was pleased to see them both happy, for all his bluster.

‘Anyway, it’s so much more sophisticated than any Earth architecture I know of,’ Kofi added to Ronon, who was frowning slightly. The man just rolled his eyes in response and led them inside.

For the next two hours, they got a tour of the salvaged art, knowledge and culture of this fallen world. It was a moving experience that left each of them speechless.

‘When it opens, there will be workshops to pass on lost knowledge to visitors. Not just learning from Sateda, other fallen worlds like Hoff and Olesia.’ Ronon explained to them as they found themselves in a circular space with amphitheatre-style seating.

‘That’s amazing,’ Kofi said. ‘There’s a lot we all can learn from those cultures. Different ways of looking at things, solutions we hadn’t thought of. I’d like to spend more time here.’

Ronon looked surprised at Kofi saying this. ‘Earthers mostly seem to think theirs is the only way of seeing things. S’why I don’t say much sometimes.’

John had a sudden flashback to the one time Ronon had really spoken out about the Earthers’ high-handedness in the Pagasus galaxy. It was when the two of them stood in those terrifying tunnels where the Taranians met their end, being stalked by Michael’s early hybrids. Ronon had berated him for the decisions leading to that one-wraith disaster vector known as Michael Kenmore. It was also the first time Ronon had called John by his first name, and he remembered feeling warmed by his friend letting his guard down, even if it was only because his anger got the better of him, even while he’d felt justly chastised and ashamed.

John felt a wave of shame for his own arrogant culture, just as he had at the time. He also felt pleased that Ronon trusted them all enough to speak so plainly. Perhaps the ground he was standing on gave him new confidence. Not for the first time, John wondered how it must have been for Ronon to arrive among the Earthers with so much stripped away from him – his world, his culture, his safety, perhaps even his sense of identity beyond the need to fight and survive. The Lanteans had treated Ronon like a Barbarian, and he had worn that role like a costume for six years. Now, they were finally getting a glimpse of who the man really was.

‘Ronon, I think someone needs to give you a lesson in European colonialism if you want to understand Earthers better.’ Rodney interjected, ‘It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s just that there are huge parts of our own planet we do that to as well.’

John noticed a shrewd look pass between Kofi and Ronon at this remark. Yeah, Ronon didn’t need a white guy explaining Earth’s racism to him. He could hardly have missed it these last six years.

Finally, they came to a room dedicated to Satedan science, and Rodney and Kofi lit up at the books, recordings and instruments housed there. John let the two of them disappear into a babbling little huddle of nerdery and amused himself with learning some novel (to him) approaches to math.

‘Ronon!’ a woman’s voice called from across the room, and a diminutive Satedan of Ronon’s age hurried over. ‘I didn’t expect to see you back today.’ The enamoured look in the woman’s eyes was hardly unusual around Ronon, but what _was_ new was Ronon’s blush in response to her.

‘Duneyli, these are my friends, Kofi, John, Rodney,’ He smiled at her shyly. John had never seen Ronon like this, either, and it suited him.

‘Well met,’ the woman said, ‘I was just finishing for today, and I have a large vat of kash stew at home – perhaps you would all like to join me for a meal?’

‘I’m not sure . . .’ Ronon began.

‘We’d be delighted,’ John interrupted.

***

It should have been a routine mission. John had woken up that morning, given Kofi a long, slow blowjob, kissed him goodbye and told him he would be back in time for dinner. They’d been together a year and were planning to do something lowkey special to celebrate.

They had waited until Kalaba’s short day had more or less synced with theirs to get the maximum light. Leaving at eleven, Kalaba’s dawn, they took a jumper up to the ruins of the ancient facility, already reccied by Lorne’s team. Preliminary investigations suggested there might be some leads here on ZPM manufacture and Rodney was itching to find out more.

The planet was deserted, another world culled to extinction by the wraith. The landscape near the facility had been blasted, devoid of plant and animal life. The planet’s other continent was rich and lush, but there was no sign it had ever been inhabited. The facility was nothing more than some ancient tech buried under a lot of tumbled rock, but one console, sheltered from the elements under an overhanging boulder, had shown promise. This was what Rodney was trying to boot up now.

They fell into their usual routine. Ronon and Teyla prowled the perimeter getting increasingly bored. When they passed near, John could hear Teyla teasing Ronon fondly about the way he had moved in with Duneyli in less than a growing cycle.

‘Given the glow Duneyli has about her lately, perhaps you will be expecting a different kind of harvest in due course?’ Teyla said, just within reach of John’s hearing. Ronon’s embarrassed, mumbled reply was lost on the breeze, but the secretly pleased look on his face was evident even from this distance. John felt a rush of warmth for his friend’s newfound happiness.

Meanwhile, Rodney worked like a demon and John annoyed him with irrelevant banter.

‘What you doing now?’ John asked, pretending to be interested. He had to admit, if only to himself, that he still liked watching McKay work. Loved the shape of his hands, the quickness in his movements, the sharp intelligence in his face as he figured out how to power up the console.

‘For fuck sake, Shepherd, you’re like a bored teenager.’ Rodney rolled his eyes and just went on working. ‘I don’t know how that very sensible boyfriend of yours puts up with such childishness.’

‘I save it all for you McKay,’ John quipped, feeling oddly hurt by banter that was typical McKay fare. Maybe because for a while now he’d suspected his boyfriend was way too good for him, and it was only a matter of time before Kofi realised it. Apparently, everyone else knew it too.

John searched his brain for a comeback, but everything he came up with was just too covered in barbs.

 _At least I don’t act like a horny teenager,_ he thought privately, with no small amount of bitterness. Lately Rodney had been working his way through the Marines at an astonishing rate. John was still somewhat shocked at how many of them were gay, or at least bi, heteroflexible or “gay for the stay”. He was pretty sure that Rodney had had (or been had by) any guy who was willing and it was rubbing salt in an old wound. McKay had seemed willing to have romantic entanglements with women, however shortlived, if Katie and Jennifer were anything to go by, but all he seemed to want from men was a fuck.

Even though John had Kofi now and things were good that still burned at him. It was an old source of pain, how men treated each other. Not Kofi, who was a serial cuddler with marshmallow on the inside just like John, but when John had made his aborted attempt to come out in his teens he had quickly felt more object than human in the clubs he had ventured into, and McKay had made him feel similarly with his clumsy come-ons and innuendo.

Kofi had explained to John gently that had he ventured into a gay bookshop or gone to a support group he might have had a very different experience and John supposed he was right, that his internalised homophobia had damned gay men because of the tyranny of pickup joints that are just as soulless in the straight world.

That still didn’t explain McKay’s attitude.

John realised, too late, that all this resentment was showing on his face and Rodney was looking at him somewhat quizzically. John was about to say something sarcastic to break the tension, when Rodney swore, looking down at his hand, and then shrieked in a way that seized at John’s heart.

The ugliest bug John had ever seen was crawling along the console, where Rodney had shaken it loose. It was about the size of a large mouse and looked like something between a scorpion and a stag beetle, with huge mandibles and a long, swishing tail, armoured in an iridescent, blue-grey, articulated shell.

John and bugs did not get on at the best of times, but his best friend’s shriek and ensuing panic had sent his phobia into the stratosphere. He swallowed his own cry down and tried to breathe through his rising panic.

‘John.’ Rodney’s voice had suddenly switched to eerily calm, edged with a wheeze. ‘John, listen. This is bad. It bit me, and I can feel . . . you need to get my EpiPen. You need to catch that thing and take it back to Carson. And John . . .’ His voice was sounding rougher by the second, ‘. . . if I don’t make it . . .’ the wheezing was getting worse, and John was reaching for the EpiPen he always carried, his heart seized with sheer terror. ‘. . . I . . .’

Rodney sank to his knees and John grabbed for him, looping his arms round Rodney’s chest so that he felt the exact moment when McKay’s breathing stopped. The other man held a hand to his own throat for just a second and then passed out. John had seen anaphylaxis before in Rodney, but this was terrifyingly quick. Rodney’s hand had swollen up to almost double in size, an angry red welt on the back where the creature stung him. John administered the EpiPen quickly and efficiently, just like last time, but unlike last time he saw little response.

‘Teyla, Ronon, medical emergency! McKay’s down!’

He gave mouth to mouth, noting how puffy Rodney’s lips were. After a minute or so, Rodney was breathing again, but shallowly. His pulse was weak and thready.

Remembering Rodney’s instructions, John looked for the bug. The ugly monster was taking a leisurely crawl across the console, and he managed to capture it with shaking hands, without killing it, using Rodney’s travel cup. By now, Teyla and Ronon were lifting Rodney into the jumper. John took her up, dialling the gate and radioing in the emergency. Five minutes later, they set down in the jumper bay, a med team waiting for them, but Rodney’s heart had already stopped.


	4. Chapter 4

Carson wasted no time in using the defibrillator on Rodney and managed to get a weak pulse again, but his face was grave.

‘We need te get him into stasis. Whatever this venom is, he’s showing a systemic reaction to it that his body can’t fight. The anaphylaxis has only complicated the situation.’ He said all this as Rodney was lifted onto a gurney and then they whisked him away to run towards the transporters. The team followed on, taking the next transport, but by the time they got to the stasis bay Rodney was already under.

John had seen Carson look worried for his patients many times, but this particular look was one he knew from the times it had been hopeless.

‘I’m sorry I did nae give you a chance to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘There just wasn’t time.’

John felt himself seize, his body immobile. The critter he had captured was tap tap tapping inside Rodney’s travel mug. His heart constricted from a mixture of terror and something far worse. Teyla grabbed his arm. ‘John,’ she said gently, ‘give the creature to Carson. Maybe he can find an antidote.’

John proffered the mug to his friend, as if in a dream, and Carson took it.

‘Good, let’s see what we can do with this.’ But his voice had that humouring quality, and there was no more hope in his eyes than there had been before.

Carson left for his lab. Teyla and Ronon left to make a report. John remained frozen to the floor in the stasis room, as immobile as Rodney’s lifeless body.

***  
‘Thought I’d find you here,’ Kofi said many hours later. John was sitting on the floor now, back to the wall, still staring at Rodney’s stasis pod as if something was going to happen.

Kofi just sank down next to John and put an arm around him. John found it hard to acknowledge his presence. It felt almost faithless to do so, but he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a comfort to have Kofi’s warm, living body next to him. Kofi fed him a sandwich and a hot drink and John shivered at the sight of the travel mug.

 _Why did it have to be a bug?_ What if he’d have been quicker if he hadn’t been so phobic? _What if Rodney had seen the bug because I wasn’t distracting him?_ he added, more bitterly still.

‘You should come get some rest, John.’ Kofi said at last. ‘There’s nothing you can do here.’

‘I can’t leave him. I just can’t,’ was all John could say in reply.

‘Okay,’ Kofi said, kissing him on the temple. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

Half an hour later, Kofi bought him a bed roll and a sleeping bag, a thermos of coffee, and a bag of snacks.

‘Call me if you need me,’ his boyfriend said, ruffling his hair, and then he was gone, as if he had been intruding, which was true in a way John desperately didn’t want it to be. Kofi was Rodney’s friend and John’s boyfriend, but John and Rodney, for all the things they weren’t, were something so much more.

‘Don’t fucking die, McKay,’ John said bitterly to the suspended body in the pod. And then it suddenly felt necessary to be honest, as if somehow Rodney’s life depended upon it, however foolish that might seem.

‘I still love you. There’s nothing to be done about that but there it is. I don’t know what I’ll do if you die.’ The terror of losing Rodney was greater than his fear of bugs, by a factor of millions.

***

Rodney had been in stasis for a week. Carson was working ungodly hours, alongside Kofi and his team, to try and synthesise a working antivenom. It was proving to be a challenge. Even if they managed it, Carson was not hopeful about Rodney’s condition.

John went to work, sort of, but every second of downtime was spent with Rodney. Kofi checked in on him but did not stay long.

The man’s patience and understanding over this made John love him all the more, but that did not change the way his entire world was focused on McKay right now. He felt like a complete shit about it, but it couldn’t be any other way. He knew that when all this was done, he probably wouldn’t still have a boyfriend. That thought hurt, but not enough to change what he was doing.

Right now, Kofi was snuggled up against him and John had the sudden urge to kiss the man stupid, so he did.

‘I’m being such a shit to you,’ he said.

‘No,’ Kofi said, ‘You’re really not.’ He kissed John again, and it was full of affection. ‘Listen, John. I do love you, but I’m never going to feel about you the way you so obviously feel about him. So it’s really okay that you don’t feel that way about me either.’

God, this man really knew how to cut through the crap. One of the many things John loved.

‘Are you breaking up with me?’ John felt a stab of loss.

‘I don’t see why I should,’ Kofi said, pulling John reassuringly close. ‘I just need to accept where your priorities lie. And you need to accept that if I meet someone who makes me feel like that, my priorities might change too.’

‘And then it’s over?’

‘Not necessarily. Depends how you feel about non-monogamy. We’ve talked around that in the past but never really to a conclusion. You know I’ve been in open relationships before. But maybe now isn’t really the time, eh? You’ve got enough going on in that crazy head of yours.’

John just sighed and cuddled against the man some more.

‘Will you come back for a bit, take the night off?’ Kofi said eventually.

‘I can’t, Kofi. Can’t leave him alone.’ John felt torn, though, longing for the comfort of Kofi’s arms, just not quite the way he was longing to see Rodney’s blue eyes open.

***

Radek went back to the planet, downloading all the information they could find. The little Czech told Rodney’s frozen form that they had unlocked the secret to recharging ZPM’s, but what was more important to John was the information they found on the planet’s indigenous life. After passing a file on the nasty little critter to the team working on the antivenom, Carson began to look slightly less hopeless. After another week, he finally said he was ready to try and resuscitate Rodney.

‘I don’t want to get your hopes up.’ Even though Teyla and Ronon were right there, he said this as if to John alone, and John felt oddly comforted that his ridiculous, inappropriate, and unrequited love was being tacitly acknowledged by their friend. ‘Rodney was very close to death, close to multiple organ failure. On earth, he wouldnae stand a chance, but I have some tricks up my sleeve.’

‘Just do it, Doc,’ John said, his fists clenched.

The next four hours were a waking nightmare. Rodney coded four times. The antivenom worked, but the damage to his organs was substantial.

Finally, Carson came out with a grave look on his face, and John knew it was more bad news. Teyla and Ronon flanked John as he jumped to his feet.

‘He’s stable, but his liver is failing. We have him in an induced coma.’

John knew what that meant. He’d once had a young airman who had taken a paracetamol overdose after a bad tour in Iraq. It had taken the man a month to die. Liver failure wasn’t something you walked away from.

Then John remembered transplants. Maybe Rodney could . . . he knew it was a long shot, and it would mean an end to Atlantis, a long health battle, but not death . . .

John was already writing his resignation letter in his head. If Rodney wasn’t here, for whatever reason, he couldn’t be either. It was that simple.

‘John, I need to consult you in private, please.’

John was bewildered. What could Carson possible have to consult him about?’

‘Sit down, John.’ The man’s face was still grave, and John was panicking, suddenly irrationally worried he was going to get a lecture about his inappropriate feelings for his teammate.

‘Carson, what is it?’ His anxiety no doubt showed through his fatigue . . . he hadn’t got a proper night’s sleep in two weeks.

‘I don’t think Rodney told ye, and he asked me not to until I had no choice. I nagged him about it but ye know how stubborn the man was . . . is.’

John noted the correction with a cold shudder.

‘Told me what, Carson?’

‘After the incident with the second childhood parasite, he made ye his main medical proxy. Ye have a decision to make, and not an easy one.’

Carson placed an object very carefully in John’s hand. It was Ancient – a lozenge-shaped gizmo the size of John’s palm.

‘What’s that telling ye?’ Carson asked.

John closed his eyes. The object had been initialised already, presumably by Carson. John interfaced with the device even more easily than usual, and it told him what it could do.

‘Fucking hell.’ He opened his eyes on Carson’s sharp gaze. Implanted into Rodney, this device would sustain a failing organ, potentially even repair it over time. It would mean Rodney would not only live, he could stay here in Atlantis. Would probably have to, if he was carrying Ancient tech inside of him. John felt a surge of hope, then it felt like he threw cold water over himself.

If it worked. If a 10,000-year-old piece of tech was reliable enough to implant. If it was safe. If it was compatible with someone with only an artificial ATA gene.

‘Aye, I’ve given ye a hard choice, John, and I know it. And we simply can’t risk waking Rodney to ask his consent. I’m sorry to do this, but it’s on you. I can’t even give you clear risks and odds. We know what Ancient tech can do; we know how reliable it can be. We’ve also had enough examples of where it’s gone disastrously wrong. But this? We’ve never attempted this before, to integrate Ancient tech with a living human.’

‘Worst case scenario, doc?’

‘It kills him. Although more likely we’re just where we were before, getting him to Earth and a transplant waiting list, with a little less time.

‘And his chances of survival if we go down the transplant route?’

‘Honestly? Less than fifty percent at best, given his blood type, that’s probably optimistic. But delay isn’t going to help that any.’

‘Can we get him on the waiting list for a transplant, start tissue matching or whatever they need to do, from here?’

‘Aye, we can do that.’

‘Then do that now. And tell me how long I have to make a decision.’

‘The sooner the better, John, because if it works this device will halt the deterioration. But an hour isn’t going to make a significant difference.’

***

It was just like Rodney to blindside John like this. This was in a weird way about the most intimate thing the man could ask of him, to hold McKay’s life in his hands, to have such power over his body. He left Carson’s office and found Teyla and Ronon still standing where he left them, waiting for news. Teyla seemed to read his look, pressing her forehead to his while Ronon put his big hand to the back of John’s neck.

‘He made me his medical proxy,’ John was still stunned by this fact. ‘I have to decide if it’s worth the risk to use a ten-thousand-year-old device that could save not just his life, but his career.

‘Rodney trusting you with his life is nothing new, John.’ Teyla said carefully. ‘He has done so for many years now. You will make the right decision.’

‘What would you do, Teyla?’

‘I would put my trust in you, just as Rodney has,’ was her less than helpful answer. He looked at Ronon with pleading eyes.

‘What Teyla said,’ the man responded. ‘John, only you can make the decision. If you don’t know what McKay would want, then nobody does.’

John could feel a panic attack coming on. He had to get out of there. He ran from the infirmary and his feet (and the nearest transporter) took him to the pier he and Rodney had sat together on so many times.

He ignored the tears in his eyes and the almost suffocating tightness in his chest. He had to figure this out.

‘What would you do, Mckay, if you were in my shoes?’ he asked the empty air.

‘I’d take the big fat risk and leap into the technological unknown, you moron.’ McKay’s scathing voice played in his head, so familiar he knew exactly what the man would say. There was no way Rodney would pass up the chance to be a living experiment in Ancient science.

From the moment Carson told him, he honestly had known there was no choice in the matter. But how was he going to live with it if it went wrong?


	5. Chapter 5

While Carson was prepping for surgery, John visited Rodney. The man’s skin was the wrong colour entirely, and his eyes were bruised and sunken. A dozen machines, some Ancient, some Earth-tech, were keeping him alive; breathing for him, cleaning his blood, monitoring and stimulating his heart. Even with this surgery, McKay was very weak, and his recovery was going to be slow, and far from inevitable.

Without it, Rodney’s odds were looking worse all the time. It turned out none of his family were compatible for a live donor tissue transplant. His blood type was rare enough that finding a compatible organ donor would be improbable.

 _Trust you to be special in every possible way_ , John thought bitterly. _You couldn’t have boring old “O for ordinary” blood like mine._

The Ancient device _had_ to work. John took Rodney’s hand, trying to will his strength into the other man’s frail body.

‘Listen, this is probably inappropriate, so I’m sorry but . . .’ John bent down and kissed Rodney’s cheek. ‘Don’t die, okay? Just don’t.’

A nurse came in then and ushered him out. All he could do now was wait.

There were six interminable hours of waiting. The nurses occasionally bustled through but their faces were tight and anxious and they refused to give any news.

Teyla and Ronon didn’t leave the whole time. Kofi turned up every couple of hours with drinks and snacks, looking awkward and unsure of what to do or say and slipping away quickly each time.

Kanaan was looking after Torren, but the two of them came by every once in a while. Torren quickly picked up on Teyla’s worry though, and she would usher them both away. Duneyli was back on Sateda, but she’d sent a box of devilish puzzle games to keep them occupied. Normally, John loved a good puzzle, and Duneyli knew this, but today he couldn’t focus on anything, no matter how his friends tried to distract him.

By the fifth hour, the team had abandoned the hard chairs outside the surgery and were huddled together on the floor. Ronon was propped in the corner with John leaning against him, Teyla was lying on her back next to John with her feet up on a chair. She held John’s hand the whole time. Eventually, she moved round and used John’s thigh as a pillow. Tentatively, he reached out and brushed the hair from her forehead. He felt such a strong wave of love for both her and Ronon he didn’t know what to do with it.

‘Teyla?’

‘Yes, John?’

‘Are you ever going to tell us what the mist beings showed you?’

There was a long silence, so long John thought that was all the response he was going to get. Finally, though, Teyla spoke.

‘I was somewhere the wraith would never come. My child could run free and without fear. I wish I could have this . . . not forever, just for a little while.’

‘A holiday?’

‘More than that, perhaps,’ Teyla said carefully, ‘I suspect that I would need some recovery time if ever I was to find such a place.’

‘A sabbatical, then?’

‘Mmm, yes, that’s more like what I would like, though I don’t know how to achieve this.’

‘Would you go back to Earth?’

‘I would, but I do not think it is possible.’

‘Aw come on, Teyla, you must have a stack of money saved by now.’ John had fought for fair pay for Teyla and Ronon, no matter that they barely spent any of it. It was the principle.

‘I do not,’ she said simply.

‘What? How come? Apart from the few thousand you spent on sushi when we were in Frisco, I never saw you spend a dime, Teyla.’

‘She spent it on medical supplies for the Hoffan virus victims,’ Ronon explained.

‘Ronon!’ Teyla chided.

Oh, fuck. Wasn’t that just like her? But it made John sick that his people would take money from a Pegasun for supplies to help with the mess they made. He hadn’t realised. It was easily rectified, too. John had more than enough to replace her earnings, thanks to his inheritance. And more than enough to set her up for a sabbatical.

But then Carson was coming out, his face tired and grim, and the conversation was forgotten in an instant as the friends jumped to their feet. John’s heart dropped, but Carson placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Again, he talked as if to John alone, as if John was the spouse or family member in this scenario.

‘He’s alive, and the device is operational and in situ. That’s really all I can say just now. Only time will tell if it works.’

John had been through so many bedside vigils in his life, and a whole lot of them had been for Rodney McKay. In hindsight, he remembered the drama and the fear, the hurt and the worry. What he always forgot was the interminable boredom, the butt-numbing chairs, the pacing with nowhere to go. The awful, pervasive smell of hospitals and sickness. The way his brain tuned into all the machines, listening out for the slightest change, letting the rhythm of breathing apparatus and heartbeat monitor take over his senses.

Twelve hours later, he was still there at Rodney’s side, still holding the man’s hand tightly and not caring who saw. He fancied that Rodney’s colour was a little better and looked expectantly at Carson while the doctor went through his tests.

‘I don’t want te get ahead of myself,’ Carson said cautiously, ‘but these results are positive. The device is working, for now at least.’

John found his free hand was shaking. Tears were in his eyes.

‘Go get some rest, lad,’ Carson urged him, but John couldn’t, not yet. He didn’t know what he was still waiting for.

‘I’m not gonna wake him for another twenty-four hours at least. You might want to think about not looking like shit when he sees you. It’ll only worry him.’

An hour later when Carson found John still there, he pointedly handed John a sleeping pill and a glass of water.

‘Go home, John.’ He said, not unkindly.

John automatically swallowed the pill and headed out the door. He bumped into Kofi in the hallway, on his way to check on John. He took the man’s hand shyly and tipped a head on his shoulder. The sleeping pill was acting significantly faster than he was used to, or else the adrenaline was finally leaving him.

‘Come on,’ said Kofi, ‘let’s get you to bed.’

*** 

‘You look like shit,’ was still the first thing Rodney said to him when his blue eyes finally opened the next day. John had managed a solid six hours sleep with Kofi spooned behind him, but it had hardly undone the impact of the last two weeks.

‘Why thank you, you don’t look so hot yourself McKay,’ but John could not suppress the joyful grin that accompanied his sarcastic words.

He was still holding Rodney’s hand, but now Rodney was squeezing back, a little weakly, but nonetheless with a certain amount of conviction.

‘I didn’t die. I really thought I was going to,’ Rodney said, his face suddenly full of fear.

John’s look must have echoed back all the pain of the last two weeks, because McKay’s face dropped even more and he said:

‘Oh, God, I’m still going to die, aren’t I?’

‘You did die.’ John’s feelings were to raw to sugar-coat it. ‘And you’re not out of the woods, but it’s looking good, Rodney. You have a little bit of Ancient tech inside you that’s working miracles.’

Rodney’s face was comically shocked by this news, but there was a gleam in his eyes.

‘Oh yeah, and thanks for making me medical proxy and not telling me.’

‘Oh, I, er . . . didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. But Jeannie is a long way away, and you’re a good friend and, and . . .’

‘It’s okay, Rodney.’ John squeezed the hand he was still holding.

This may not be what he wanted it to be, but it sure was something.

***

The device was performing 1000% better than expected. Carson predicted it would completely renew Rodney’s liver within a year, but that even now if the device failed Rodney would survive, with medication. In addition, it seemed to be unexpectedly accelerating the healing of Rodney’s other organs. After two weeks, Carson was happy to report that Rodney was fit enough to leave the infirmary and even for a little gentle activity.

John walked him back to his room, letting Rodney lean on him most of the way, and feeling simply joyful that his friend was going to be okay.

‘Hey John,’ Rodney said, a little hesitantly, as they shuffled out of the transporter near his quarters. ‘I wanted to say thank you for being there. For making the tough decision and saving my life, but more than that for not leaving my side, for giving me the strength to get through this.’ Rodney had his arm round John’s shoulder while John’s arm hooked under his. He smelled a little bit of infirmary but a lot of Rodney, and it just felt good to be near him, to feel him solid and alive and real.

‘Hey, I just popped by now and then, it’s no big deal.’ John lied. He’d tried to reduce the amount of time in the infirmary since Rodney had been awake, lingering when the man was dozing but trying to ration his stays when he was alert.

‘One of the nurses told me you pretty much never left the infirmary when I was unconscious. And that you camped out in the stasis room with your bed roll.’

_Fuck._

John didn’t trust himself to say anything to that.

‘So, I also checked in with Kofi, and he seemed cool with it, so I don’t have to worry about your boyfriend getting the wrong idea, or worse you losing that rather splendid guy over our friendship. Because I don’t want to see you unhappy again, John. And I don’t want to lose you to one of your trademark skateboard suicide attempts.’

John stopped in his tracks, processing and reprocessing what he’d just heard.

‘What is it?’ Rodney asked, frowning.

‘I never told you that,’ John said slowly and carefully, his heart thudding in his chest. ‘The skateboard incident. I never told you that.’

‘Well you clearly did, because I know. And I remember you telling me, when . . .’ Rodney’s face suddenly fell. ‘Oh.’ He went silent, his face flushed. While John stayed stock-still, Rodney let go of him and shuffled onwards towards his room, looking suddenly miserable. Eventually, John followed, not knowing what to say or think, but resumed his support of Rodney awkwardly, his heart thudding so loud he was sure it was audible.

They returned to Rodney’s room in silence and Rodney sank onto the sofa, breathing heavily and looking fatigued. John lifted Rodney’s feet onto a handy pile of journals and got him a blanket and a glass of water. Then he sat on the other end of the sofa looking at Rodney expectantly but still not knowing what to say.

‘I suppose I better explain myself.’ Rodney said, and he looked . . . abashed. Ashamed, even.

But suddenly John was daring to hope something he hadn’t allowed himself to.

‘It was you!’ he said, more excited than accusatory. ‘In my mist-dream. Rodney, that was _you._ ’

Rodney’s mouth opened but no words came out. He looked at John for the longest time, then finally said, ‘I thought . . . I mean I knew that the John in my dreams was made from your memories, but I thought . . . I thought it was the mist.’

‘So did I,’ John said, his heart beating wildly. ‘I thought it was showing me my desires, not what was possible.’

Rodney looked suddenly stricken. ‘Are you telling me that I could have had that if I just said . . .’

John smiled gently, ‘I’m telling you you can _still_ have that, any time you want it.’

‘But Kofi . . .’

‘Would be very happy for me.’

‘Really?’ Rodney’s look was incredulous.

‘Yeah. We talked.’ John knew whatever happened with Kofi they’d be okay.

‘I . . . I knew you were sad because the mist aliens had shown you something that made you happy . . .’ Rodney looked like he still hadn’t quite got hold of the concept of what was happening.

‘ _You_ made me happy Rodney. You . . . loving me.’

‘Oh God, I do!’ Rodney confessed, looking at once fraught but relieved. ‘Why didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, this means you love me, right? Because . . . there aren’t many other explanations for camping out on a bed roll in my stasis chamber, now I think of it.’

‘No, I guess not. I guess the cat’s out of the bag.’ John took a deep breath. ‘I kinda love you a stupid amount, Rodney.’ God, it was good to be able to finally say that.

But Rodney looked panicked again. ‘In the dream it worked because we were reading each other’s minds. Or at least the aliens were reading our minds and sharing the data. I’m shit at relationships. Worse at relationships with men. I’m going to fuck this up.’

‘You’re not gonna fuck this up, Rodney,’ John tried to reassure him. ‘Or at least you _are_ going to fuck this up, but it’ll be okay, because I’m gonna fuck it up too and it’s _us_ and we’ll understand and make it okay.’

‘You think so?’ Rodney’s voice sounded plaintive and damn, John never realised how vulnerable the man could be.

He nodded, and then sidled along the sofa until his hip and shoulder were nestled against Rodney’s.

‘Hey, Rodney,’ he said, taking Rodney’s hand and twining their fingers. ‘I know I have to be gentle with you. I know your heart is still a little weak. But is kissing on Carson’s approved activity list?’

Rodney turned to look at him, his face gratifyingly hopeful. Instead of answering with words, he just cocked his head to one side and leaned in. John mirrored the move and their lips met gently in the middle. John could feel his lips trembling . . . both their lips trembling . . . and the effort it took to stay soft and gentle was killing him but oh, God, the taste of Rodney’s lips in reality was so much more than a mist-induced fantasy. If he’d been worried that real life would not live up to his dreams, he knew in that moment that it was the very imperfections, the friction the two of them generated together, that was going to make reality so much better.


	6. Chapter 6

John entered the mess hall and there, sitting at the usual team table, were Rodney and Kofi, deep in an animated discussion. The handwaving might have looked alarming, were it not for the wry smiles on both their faces. John’s heart gave a little skip at the sight of his boyfriends (his _boyfriends!_ ) being so natural with each other. If anything, this whole saga seemed to have made the two of them firmer friends. They had done the smart thing and talked stuff through with each other as well as with John, and everyone seemed to be comfortably on the same page.

 _‘But just so we’re clear, I’m not thinking of wild and adventurous threesomes in our future,’_ Rodney had said emphatically, once he’d got his head round what John was asking and accepted it more easily than John expected.

Which was okay, because threesomes were the last thing on John’s mind.

He still wanted it all with Rodney, to be that grumpy old married couple that everybody hated. And yet it was neither odd nor inconvenient to him that he also had room in his heart for Kofi, the brilliant man who had brought him so much healing and love, and was way too good for him but seemed to love him just a little bit anyway.

If Rodney had been uncomfortable with the idea of polyamory, John would have let Kofi go, because Rodney was John’s priority and always would be, but that didn’t change what he had with Kofi and he was glad that Rodney hadn’t made him choose.

John grabbed something that looked vaguely like a burrito and asked if he could join Kofi and Rodney.

‘Sure, I was headed off anyway,’ Kofi said, getting up to go. ‘I’ll see you for our date tomorrow?’ he said to John, and John smiled and nodded, blushing slightly. This was all new and a teeny bit embarrassing. ‘And are both of you up for a TV night next week? I’ve got the first few episodes of a new show to look at, it’s called Grimm, and David Greenwalt is a co-creator – monsters and werewolves and sinister fairy tale shit – you’ll love it.’

‘ _You’ll_ love it, you irredeemable Buffy fan,’ Rodney countered with a grin. It was a running theme between the two of them – Kofi preferred fantasy, Rodney liked sci-fi, as long as it at least tried to be intelligent. John was happy with either, but if he was honest his inclinations tended more towards comics and superheroes. All three of them consumed everything in each genre that made its way to Atlantis anyway, so it was entirely academic.

They watched Kofi leave and then John looked at Rodney, feeling suddenly shy. He was only just getting used to the idea that they were romantically involved. It felt fresh and shiny and a little stiff, like new clothes.

‘How are you today?’ Rodney asked, oddly formal, as if he was feeling just the same way.

‘Missing Teyla already,’ John replied, ‘I didn’t realise how much work she did around here. I should never have let her go.’ John hadn’t just let her go, he had bought her a beach house in Goa and three plane tickets. Fortunately, they already had US passports from their previous sojourn on Earth.

‘Yeah you should. I give her three months, tops, anyhow.’

‘I’ll take that action. Reckon she’ll make it to at least five. Loser takes a week of the winner’s night shifts?’

Rodney reached across and shook John’s hand with his trademark arrogant smirk, and John’s heart did a little flip. He loved this man even when he was too much. _Especially_ when he was too much.

Rodney went suddenly quiet after that, and John focussed on his actually-nothing-like-a-burrito, trying not to worry about the way he could almost see the gears grinding in his boyfriend’s head.

‘So, I just went to see Carson,’ Rodney said finally, and his voice was loaded with . . . something John could not name. He found himself holding his breath, waiting expectantly for Rodney to continue.

‘It’s my heart . . .’ Rodney began, and John’s own heart clenched. ‘Carson seems to think it’s properly healed now.’ Rodney continued, and John let out the breath he was holding. ‘So that means . . .’

John finally caught a clue. Rodney had been restricted to only non-strenuous, non-stressful activity for the last six weeks, and that had meant absolutely no sex. His eyes brightened.

‘So what exactly are we doing here?’ He asked, eyebrows raising in enquiry.

‘Fucked if I know,’ Rodney said, grinning broadly.

John hastily piled the rest of their food onto one tray, because he was a responsible boyfriend, and Rodney’s hypoglycaemia was a serious condition, and then he grabbed Rodney’s hand with the one not carrying a tray and dragged him towards the nearest transporter. When inside, he pressed his body the length of Rodney’s and kissed him till he ran out of breath, still balancing a dinner tray in one hand, before selecting the destination for his quarters.

During Atlantis’s brief sojourn back on Earth, John had gone a little mad, possibly out of boredom, possibly out of the fact that the one and only benefit to being on Earth at all was the ability to spend some of his ridiculous bank balance. So John had finally moved into a large apartment with a spectacular view, more befitting of a military commander, and furnished it with everything he could possibly want, including a bed that was possibly seven or eight times the size of the one he’d been sleeping in for the previous five years.

He thought he might ask Rodney to move in with him one day, but he wasn’t in a rush for that. What he _was_ in a rush for right now was to get Rodney onto the big bed and get him naked. Fortunately, Rodney seemed entirely on the same page as him and was pulling at John’s clothes whilst simultaneously dragging him towards the bedroom, as soon as they stepped inside the apartment.

‘Want you so much,’ Rodney said, and dammit, why hadn’t John just given in to that very first come on and let himself discover what could be on the other side of it? Because Rodney wanting him turned out not to be such a terrible thing after all, especially not when there was all that love in the man’s eyes alongside the desire.

‘The feeling is more than mutual,’ John responded, pulling Rodney’s T-shirt up over his head and pushing him down on the bed. He climbed up the other man’s body and then trailed kisses down his chest while his fingers deftly undid Rodney’s belt and pants and pulled them down and off.

It was weird. He knew every inch of this man’s body but had never touched him like this in real life. He wanted badly to feel the weight of Rodney’s cock in his mouth. He started to press his lips to the other man’s erection through his boxers, and Rodney groaned gratifyingly loudly, carding his fingers through John’s hair and squirming underneath him. John reached up to pinch his nipples and he squirmed even more.

John was trying to slow things down, but it was hard. He climbed back up Rodney’s body to kiss him, but somehow their cocks ended up grinding against each other through their remaining clothes and that really didn’t help matters at all. So he kissed back down Rodney’s body, deciding to finish what he started. On the way, he spent some time sucking each of Rodney’s nipples in turn, lapping at his bellybutton, and licking at his inner thighs. Rodney was biting his lower lip and panting, clearly trying very hard not to be impatient.

John carefully removed Rodney’s boxers, and took a long look at him, smiling.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

‘You’re delusional,’ Rodney retorted, though he looked pleased with the compliment. ‘I’m pudgy, middle-aged and balding, and you have clearly lost your 20/20 pilot’s vision.’

‘You’re beautiful.’ John said again, insistent.

Rodney rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. ‘Talking of beautiful, get em off.’ His eyes indicated John’s remaining clothes - he’d toed off his sneakers, and Rodney had done away with his T-shirt, but his pants and briefs were still on. He slid back off the bed and removed them teasingly slowly. Rodney’s eyes grew flatteringly big as he did this.

‘Now _that’s_ beautiful,’ the man said, and John just blushed.

‘So where was I?’ John crawled back up the bed, kissing his way up the insides of Rodney’s calves, knees and thighs, until he finally got where he wanted to be, licking gently along the length of Rodney’s already hard and leaking cock. This elicited a sigh that was almost a whine, so he did it again, and then sucked the head of Rodney’s cock into his mouth, keeping things wet and gentle, wanting this to last at least more than a few seconds, which given the state of Rodney’s arousal was going to be a challenge. This time, Rodney’s cry was loud, a cross between a whine and a moan. It was fucking hot, and John desperately wanted to make these noises happen again and again. He didn’t remember Rodney being this vocal in their shared fantasy.

‘God, John, your perfect mouth,’ Rodney moaned. John could see he was holding himself desperately against the mattress, trying to stop himself from pushing up into John’s mouth. Everything about his responses was so arousing it had John on the edge, and John was having his own fight to resist humping himself against the mattress or Rodney’s leg. He lifted his hips away from the bed so he could focus on his lover.

His palms pressed into the crease of Rodney’s hips, holding him down against the bed, and then he sucked hard.

‘Fuck!’ Rodney cried out, his body trying to lift off the bed, but John wouldn’t let it. He kept up the relentless suction, too far gone himself for any finesse. ‘Oh God, John, I’m gonna . . .’

John just increased his attack, at the same time sliding one hand down to trace from Rodney’s balls, along his perineum and back to press against his hole, at which point Rodney’s entire body spasmed with pleasure and he was coming and coming into John’s mouth and John was right there on the edge with him, pressing his body down to get enough friction to chase his own orgasm, while his mouth gently nursed Rodney through the after-shocks of his.

Rodney tuned into John’s plight suddenly. ‘Get up here,’ he said. John crawled back up his body, and Rodney curled his hand around John’s head and pulled him into a devastating kiss. His other hand wrapped firmly around John’s cock and jacked him, hard and fast and perfect. In seconds he was coming so hard his brain went fuzzy. He cried against Rodney’s mouth, one continuous moan as the orgasm seemed to go on forever, one long release after nearly eight years of want.

They kissed a little, then dozed a little, then ate the rest of the supper they had brought with them from the mess. When they put the trays aside, Rodney pressed John back into the bed and straddled him.

‘This is probably terribly greedy,’ he said coyly, ‘but I’d quite like you to fuck me and then for me to fuck you when you’re all sated and loose from coming inside of me.’

John was instantly aroused at the thought of this. ‘Yeah, I could go for that,’ he smiled shyly. It was weird how quickly he let go of the idea that he was experienced with Rodney. The reality was not like the fantasy. In the fantasy, they would have just known what to do. Having it spelt out to him like this was something else entirely. It really pushed his buttons. In a good way.

Rodney leaned down, kissing John slowly, taking him apart piece by piece with his mouth and tongue. He murmured into John’s ear, ‘I’m going to prep you first, so that I can sink straight into you after you come in me.’

Fuck, that was hot.

Rodney proceeded to kiss his way down John’s body, taking a little time to tease his cock, and then he got condoms and lube out of the bedside drawer and pushed one of John’s knees up into his chest. He squeezed lube onto his finger and started to tease at John’s hole, taking his time to open him up with one finger, then two, then three, then four. He used plenty of lube and his fingers massaged John’s prostate as he finally began to jack John’s cock and John could not decide what he wanted more – to be inside of Rodney or for Rodney to be inside of him.

‘My turn,’ he said, pushing Rodney over onto his back and pressing the length of his body against his lover. He had the sudden urge to wrap Rodney tight in his arms and kiss him insensible, so he did.

He wanted to express how much he loved Rodney, but he wasn’t good at that stuff so he hoped his body was saying it for him.

‘John . . .’ Rodney said his name breathlessly when he finally came up for air. John just smiled bashfully and grabbed for the lube.

Rodney turned over onto his hands and knees and then sunk his head down onto his folded arms, leaving his ass in the air.

‘God, your perfect ass, Rodney . . .’ John ran his hands over McKay’s behind, and teased his fingers along the crack.

‘Can you do me a favour?’ Rodney asked breathlessly. ‘Can you try not to pay me too much attention? Or I won’t last enough to fuck you. I want you to be a bit selfish, John. Think of your own pleasure, not mine.’

Now that was a fucking challenge to a man who had self-sacrifice written into his DNA. ‘That’s a tall order,’ he breathed, ‘but I’ll try.’

John prepped Rodney carefully, caressing his back and ass as he went, but he avoided Rodney’s prostate, much as it pained him to do so, and much as he wanted to make his lover moan for him.

‘Fuck me, please John,’ Rodney finally said, and John rolled on the condom and sank himself slowly into Rodney’s perfect heat.

‘John, John. Wanted you. Wanted this for so long.’ Rodney was moaning as John bottomed out inside of him and emotion threatened to overwhelm John. He didn’t know how to contain the feelings bubbling up inside his chest.

‘Rodney.’ He said his lover’s name like it was everything in the world. ‘I . . . love you.’ It was hard to get the words out, but he couldn’t not say it. ‘I fucking love you.’ As he said the words his hips bucked against Rodney, punctuating his thoughts with stabs of pleasure.

John kissed up Rodney’s spine and into his neck and hair as his body moved closer and closer into his lover’s. Rodney lifted his head and craned around, meeting John’s lips in an awkward but somehow perfect kiss.

Then he dropped his head back down. ‘Fuck me,’ he said, somewhere between ordering and begging, and John was helpless to refuse. He pulled out slowly, all the way, and sank back into Rodney just hard enough to make the man cry out. Then he did the same thing again, and again, and again, making a frustratingly good effort to miss Rodney’s prostate as often as he hit it. Even so, Rodney was moaning with pleasure, and John had to fight his every instinct not to reach around and jack Rodney’s cock as his own orgasm began to build.

‘Yes, god, please John, come inside me!’ Rodney’s cries pushed John higher and he started thrusting raggedly inside of Rodney, suddenly heedless of anything except his own need to come. ‘That’s it! Yes!’ Rodney encouraged him, and John’s hips slammed into him, fingers gripping Rodney’s hips so tight he was probably leaving bruises. He could feel the beginning of his orgasm, his balls tightening, and he thrust home, hard and deep, crying out Rodney’s name as he climaxed.

They both collapsed down onto the mattress for a long moment, and then Rodney was pushing him onto his back, pushing his knees up to his chest, gently caressing his spent cock and balls, and then, after putting on a condom, sinking his thick cock inside of John’s lax and pliant body with a happy sigh.

John thought he was going to get fucked hard to a quick completion, but Rodney was in no rush. Nestled deep inside John’s body he took the time to reach for extra pillows, propping them behind John’s head so that they could kiss without him straining his neck. Then he proceeded to kiss John forever, slow and hot and languid, while his body just pressed deeply into him without any need to move.

It was fucking bliss.

‘This is perfect,’ said Rodney. ‘You’re perfect.’

John’s cock was out of the game, but that didn’t stop the rising feelings of pleasure Rodney was giving him. When Rodney started to move, he was sure to tag John’s prostate with every gentle thrust. Rodney’s tongue was fucking John’s mouth with the same patient, insistent rhythm. One hand moved down John’s body, playing with his nipples, and then finally stroking his cock, miraculously coaxing it back to hardness.

‘Think you can come one more time, John?’

‘Oh God, Rodney,’ John moaned, ‘apparently anything’s possible with you around.’ He smiled up at his lover a little stupidly. It turned out reality with Rodney was even more improbable than fantasy.

‘I think this might be easier if you ride me,’ Rodney said, after kissing John some more. And with that he managed to flip them both over so that Rodney was on his back, John on top, with Rodney’s cock still buried deep inside of him and Rodney’s hand still jacking his cock in that same insistent way.

‘Fuck, Rodney,’ John straightened up and pushed himself down hard against Rodney’s body, making the man cry out. Oh yes, this was fucking perfect. He reached up and pinched Rodney’s nipples and the man groaned. He reached behind him to squeeze Rodney’s balls, resulting in breathless swearing. John just grinned, lifting himself away from Rodney’s body and slamming down, causing them both to cry out in pleasure. Through all of this, Rodney continued to jerk John’s cock, slowly but inexorably tightening his grip.

John was a little pleasure drunk but with some effort on his part he managed to pull together a rhythm that seemed to work for them both and matched Rodney’s hand on his cock. Rodney’s hips were thrusting up into him in perfect synchronicity with his thrust down, and both were groaning and sighing, way beyond words. Neither of them had had this much stamina in their fantasy, but the level of want between them had clearly overridden the limitations of their middle-aged bodies. And perhaps that little gizmo inside of Rodney was showing some other benefits, John reflected.

Rodney’s cries were increasing, and John knew he must be close. The thrust against John’s prostate and the swipe of Rodney’s hand against that bundle of nerves just below the head of his cock had John crying out too. So close, so close.

He looked down at Rodney. Really looked. The man’s face was a blend of ecstasy, love and wonder. It was the most beautiful, sexy thing John had seen in his entire life. The focus Rodney had on him, keeping that perfect rhythm on his dick, those perfect hits on his prostate even as he approached his own climax, it was just one more way in which Rodney McKay was a complete fucking genius.

John was so close, but he didn’t quite want to let go. He held Rodney’s gaze and lost himself in the feelings, the tight hand on his dick, the thrust of Rodney’s cock inside him. He reached behind himself, still holding Rodney’s gaze, and caressed Rodney’s balls, stroking the places where their bodies met. That was the moment that Rodney lost that perfect rhythm and all of his composure, and that’s what made it perfect for John. The staccato thrusts up into him, the shaking hand gripping his cock, tipped him over the edge into a powerful orgasm that was intensified by the feeling of Rodney’s shuddering own release, and the sound of their mutual cries and moans as the after-shocks seem to go on for ever.

Rodney’s hand milked every last bit of pleasure out of him while he reciprocated, contracting the muscles around Rodney’s cock and continuing to massage his balls gently. Finally, neither of them could take it anymore, and they tipped down onto the bed, a messy, sweat and come-soaked tangle, and they kissed and kissed because they didn’t ever want this to end.


End file.
